Posts Tagged ‘Social Security’

Ronald Brownstein, liberal ideologue from the überliberal National Journal wrote an editorial that also appeared in the also überliberal Los Angeles Times. Brownstein begins:

One reason a serious budget negotiation seems unlikely this fall is that any meaningful assault on the federal deficit would require each party to confront the contradictions between its fiscal agenda and its electoral coalition.

Two long-term trends are creating this tension. One is an electoral reshuffling: Republicans increasingly depend on support from older whites, even as Democrats rely more on the youthful-tilting minority population. The second is the federal budget’s shift in focus from children (almost half of whom are now nonwhite) to seniors (about four-fifths of whom remain white). The intersection of these dynamics has left each party advancing budget blueprints that collide with the self-interest of their core supporters.

Heading into budget negotiations, the top priority for many Republicans remains limiting Medicare, Medicaid, and maybe Social Security, the Big Three senior entitlements. The contradiction they face is that the people benefiting from those programs now comprise the core of their electoral coalition.

The GOP presidential nominee has carried most white seniors in four consecutive presidential elections, and by greater margins each time. In 2012, whites over 45 supplied Mitt Romney with nearly three-fifths of his votes, even though they made up about only two-fifths of all voters. Census figures show that children constitute about the same share of the population (just under one-fourth) in House districts represented by Republicans and Democrats. Yet whites 55 and older are nearly 22 percent of the population in Republican-held districts, compared with less than 15 percent in those Democrats control. Even more strikingly, 164 House Republicans represent districts where the share of 55-plus whites exceeds the national average. That’s true for only 74 House Democrats.

These older whites deeply resist any changes in Social Security and Medicare, which most consider insurance they have paid for, not a government benefit (although studies show older Americans receive much more in lifetime benefits than they pay in taxes). In United Technologies/National Journal Congressional Connection polling this month, fully four-fifths of whites over 50 opposed any reductions in either Social Security or Medicare. These older white voters are much more passionate about cutting programs that transfer resources to the poor, such as food stamps (three-fifths of older whites would cut the program at least somewhat) and President Obama’s health care law.

The GOP’s fiscal agenda has partly reflected these priorities. The party continues scorched-earth opposition to Obamacare, and House Republicans recently voted for deep cuts in food stamps (almost half of whose benefits flow toward children). The plan from Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., to convert Medicare into a voucher, or “premium support,” system would shelter the staunchest GOP voters by exempting anyone over 55.

Three things immediately jumped out at me as I scanned over his drivel:

Fact 1) Do you know why these middle-class whites are such bad people (in liberal’s wicked minds)? Because they believed the lying, demon-possessed bovine feces that is the promise of liberalism.

Tell me: did Democrats sell Social Security and Medicare as something that they would yank away from middle class whites? Tell you what: you show me FDR with Social Security or LBJ with Medicare telling the American people that they were going to demand a clawback on these programs for white middle class families, and I’ll buy you a Ferrari. You show me where Democrats said, “As soon as white middle class people have nothing else to fall back on because we seized control of retirement benefits (Social Security) and medical insurance for retired people (Medicare), we’re going to lower the boom on them and call them racist if they refuse to give back what we PROMISED them.” You show me.

The fact of the matter stands as this: Democrats are dishonest liars. And the only way you can be truly evil is if you believe the lies in the next fascist hijack attempt (e.g. ObamaCare) by the federal government to impose still MORE control over benefits that it will later denounce and try to claw back after Democrats made still more bullcrap promises.

That was the first thing that shot through my mind as I read the product of a truly demon-possessed brain.

Fact 2) The vicious, racist, anti-white bigotry of liberalism is once again on display. And just as Karl Marx was a self-hating Jew who despised Jews, Brownstein is a self-hating white person – and very likely a self-hating Jew akin to Karl Marx for that matter – who KNOWS as a liberal that he is a truly terrible human being, but BEING a truly terrible human being he wrongly concludes that he’s a terrible human being because of the color of his skin rather than because his ideology is depraved and evil. Let me demonstrate that fact this way: I’m going to replace the word “white” with “black” in Brownstein’s paragraph, and you tell me if it’s still just as true or not:

These older blacks deeply resist any changes in Social Security and Medicare, which most consider insurance they have paid for, not a government benefit (although studies show older Americans receive much more in lifetime benefits than they pay in taxes). In United Technologies/National Journal Congressional Connection polling this month, fully four-fifths of blacks over 50 opposed any reductions in either Social Security or Medicare.

For the record, the only poll I found was “generational” and did NOT cite differences in race. I welcome Brownstein to show me that “older blacks” would be perfectly happy – in marked contrast to “older whites” – to have THEIR benefits that they were promised over their entire working lifetimes suddenly seized away by a government that wanted to take back its lie to them after their earning years are behind them so it could hoodwink an entirely new generation on a whopping lie from the same liars who lied to the (now) elderly.

So, Democrat who wants to racebait, YOU SHOW ME THE POLLS THAT DOCUMENT BLACKS BEING HAPPY TO HAVE THEIR PROMISED BENEFITS – AGAIN PROMISED TO THEM OVER THEIR ENTIRE WORKING LIFETIMES – GUTTED SO YOU CAN DEMONIZE “OLDER WHITE PEOPLE.” YOU SHOW ME, YOU DEMON-POSSESSED LIARS.

Fact 3) Liberals are hypocrites who ONLY have the ability to see the speck in their opponent’s eye WHILE IGNORING THE GIANT MULTI-TRILLION DOLLAR LOG IN THEIR OWN. Again, I’ll document this fact in Brownstein’s own words:

These older whites deeply resist any changes in Social Security and Medicare … These older white voters are much more passionate about cutting programs that transfer resources to the poor.

How has EVERY Democrat tax and entitlement program been sold? One and the same way every time: don’t you worry: we’ll raise somebody ELSE’Staxes and force SOMEBODY ELSEto pay for your new entitlement program.

When was the last time Democrats said, “This is a government takeover that will benefit the poor, so let’s force the poor to bear the burden of paying for it”??? Try “NEVER.”

But, oh holy hell, “older middle class white people” who are in fact not one tiny bit different than “older middle class BLACK people” are evil because they want to keep the entitlement that they were promised and – for the record – were promised that it wasn’t even an “entitlement” but that they had EARNED it with all those payroll tax deductions that the federal government seized from them over the course of their entire lifetimes.

I’m also trying to think of the last time the people who were collecting welfare and food stamps ever voted to have their welfare and food stamp benefits – you know, which unlike those middle class whites they DIDN’T pay for every couple of weeks for going on fifty years – yanked away from them. Again, try “NEVER.”

Don’t you DARE act like a Democrat and expect to keep what your Democrat federal government promised you and taxed out of you your entire life to pay for. Don’t you DARE want to hold on to YOUR program. Because, you see, that’s fascist and it’s only “fascist” when Republicans do it.

The appalling ObamaCare fiasco ought to be all the proof that any carbon-based life form with an IQ above a stinkbug needs to know to realize that liberalism is truly evil. But if you DON’T think so, all you have to do is understand that the very programs that Brownstein now condemns (at least for white people) were Democrat creations that were GUARANTEED to run up giant deficits just as ObamaCare is guaranteed to run up giant deficits.

The debt we keep hearing about is $17 trillion. Barack Hussein Obama – quintessential liar that he is – demonized George W. Bush as “unpatriotic” and “a failed leader” when that debt was $9 trillion. Now, slandering hypocrite demagogue liar that he is, he sings a different tune even though by the end of his presidency, HE will have led America to higher and insanely unsustainable debt than every previous president (including George W. Bush) COMBINED.

Democrats and the lies they sold to impose their lies are ENTIRELY responsible for this guaranteed collapse of the United States of America. A vote for the Democrat Party is not merely a vote for the murder of 55 million innocent babies and counting, and it’s not just a vote for bringing the wrath of God according to Romans chapter one: it is a vote for dodo-bird EXTINCTION.

We cannot even theoretically pay these debts that Democrats and NO ONE BUT DEMOCRATS saddled us with. And who is Brownstein blaming for that? Republican older white people because they are callously demanding that Democrats actually HONOR one of their wicked demonic lies.

And what is it that liberals want to do now? They want to claw back on their previous lies on the basis of their self-serving racism and they want to now issue a whole NEW package of lies that will DWARF THE COST of their last load of demonic lies. That’s what they want to do.

That leads me to:

Fact 4) Brownstein implies that Republicans who have spent their lives opposed to Social Security and Medicare are somehow hypocritical for now demanding they get their benefits. He says “the [white Republican] people benefiting from those programs now comprise the core of their electoral coalition.”

Think about it: when the government seizes retirement insurance and retirement medicine, and forces you to pay into their Ponzi scheme year after year after year, what the hell are you supposed to do when you retire BUT take your Social Security and Medicare benefit that you were forced to buy into your entire life even though you didn’t want to???

The notion from Brownstein is that these “white” Republicans are somehow bad people for taking a benefit they were forced to purchase their entire lives so that freeloading welfare couch potatoes might have a harder time collecting the benefits they never paid so much as a damn DIME into. Who are the bad people here? The people who want the benefits they were promised and were forced to buy one paycheck at a time for fifty freaking years or the people who want somebody else’s money???

Medicare and Social Security are and always WERE truly evil programs. Like I’ve said many times – and like Brownstein openly acknowledges in his attack against white middle class people that “studies show older Americans receive much more in lifetime benefits than they pay in taxes.” Here’s my question: WHEN THE HELL WASN’T THAT THE CASE??? Is Brownstein actually trying to claim that it isn’t EQUALLY TRUE FOR BLACK MIDDLE CLASS PEOPLE??? Only WHITE people collect more than they pay into this stupid system??? Seriously??? And for the damn record, CONSERVATIVES HAVE BEEN POINTING OUT THAT FACT AND CALLING SSI AND MEDICARE THE PONZI SCHEME THAT IT IS PRECISELY BECAUSE OF THAT FACT FOR DECADES. And here’s a liberal moral idiot now finally acknowledging it just so he can say it’s whitey’s fault???

These two Democrat programs have run America into certain bankruptcy and financial implosion and an end to the American way of life and frankly the mark of the beast and the worship of the Antichrist. We are so many trillions of dollars in debt because of these two unfunded mandates that it is beyond insane.

I have ALWAYS been opposed to Social Security. My parents were also opposed to a system that they were FORCED to “contribute” to over their entire working careers. Social Security crowded out every private alternative that would have been able to pay out HIGHER returns than SSI. My parents were also opposed to Medicare because they didn’t want to be force-fed socialized medicine. In both cases, there could have been and should have been private sector programs, but the government forced them out of business. The private market could have done better for less on both fronts (as was proven by Chile’s highly successful privatized social security system) – but when the government crowded everybody else out and forced itself in, those options were as aborted as an innocent little baby by Democrats. Liberals say that if you don’t like SSI or Medicare, don’t use it. But an analogy would be for a liberal to be opposed to having a strong military; the only way that liberal could actually ACT on his or her opposition would be to move forever away from the United States. Because otherwise you are covered by the protection of that strong military you are opposed to whether you oppose it or not. To demand that somebody be forced to “contribute” to a system their entire lives and then to brand that person a hypocrite because they use the benefits that they were forced to pay for is literally demon-possessed EVIL. There is no other way to put it.

There are also no other options for this generation of retired middle class “white people” after the Democrats imposed government on what should have been private systems. That’s the dilemma for aforementioned “white” people.

And Brownstein’s answer to the dilemma that Democrats and ONLY DEMOCRATS created is to screw white people, renege on the promise that was made to them over the course of their entire working lives, and leave them to die while Democrats now repeat the same sort of pandering politics through the even BIGGER BOONDOGGLE of ObamaCare.

If you’re going to take away or reduce Social Security and Medicare benefits, take them away from the depraved idiot fools who were stupid enough and evil enough to have bought all the lies and set America up for this fiscal gap fiasco: take them away from DEMOCRATS.

Personally, I would be willing to forego my full Social Security benefits THAT I WAS FORCED TO PAY FOR BY DEMOCRATS if and only if: if Democrats officially admitted that they had destroyed America with their idiot socialism; if the Democrat Party were criminalized, such that anybody EVER AGAIN suggesting ANY FORM of socialism immediately be hauled away to either prison or to the looney bin; and if we passed the “hunt every Democrat down with dogs and burn them alive Act.” Until then, don’t you DARE suggest I give up one nickel of the benefits that Democrats swore up and down (the same damn dishonest lying way that Barack Obama swore that if you liked your insurance plan and your doctor you could keep them. PERIOD. by the way).

“No matter how we reform health care, we will keep this promise: If you like your doctor, you will be able to keep your doctor. Period. If you like your health care plan, you will be able to keep your health care plan. Period. No one will take it away. No matter what.”

And no one can argue that Obama didn’t know about this: THE VERY NATURE OF OBAMACARE MADE MILLIONS OF AMERICAN’S HEALTHCARE PLANS “ILLEGAL.” The man sold his “signature legislative accomplishment” under an ocean of lies, pure and simple. You want proof? Here it is: the White House knew at least as early as July of 2010 that what Obama had repeatedly said and CONTINUED TO SAY AFTERWARD was a demon-possessed lie. I quote:

In a June 2009 speech to the American Medical Association, Obama said that “no matter how we reform healthcare, we will keep this promise to the American people: If you like your doctor, you will be able to keep your doctor, period. If you like your healthcare plan, you’ll be able to keep your healthcare plan, period. No one will take it away, no matter what.”

“Remember: The President didn’t say if you like your plan and we approve it you can keep it,” Stewart wrote, the Post reported. “He promised that if you like your plan, you can keep it, period— “no matter what.”

Yet the NBC report said the government knew that wasn’t true, saying that buried in regulations from the July 2010 law was an estimate that because of normal turnover in the individual insurance market, “40 to 67 percent” of customers will not be able to keep their policy.

And because many policies will have been changed since the key date, “the percentage of individual market policies losing grandfather status in a given year exceeds the 40 to 67 percent range.”

“This says that when they made the promise, they knew half the people in this market outright couldn’t keep what they had and then they wrote the rules so that others couldn’t make it either,” Robert Laszewski of Health Policy and Strategy Associates, told NBC.

He estimated 80 percent of those in the individual market will not be able to keep their current policies and will have to buy insurance that meets requirements of the new law, which generally requires a richer package of benefits than most policies today.

George Schwab, 62, of North Carolina, told NBC he was “perfectly happy” with his plan from Blue Cross Blue Shield, which also insured his wife for a $228 monthly premium. But this past September, he got a letter saying his policy was no longer available.

The “comparable” plan the insurance company offered him carried a $1,208 monthly premium and a $5,500 deductible. And the best option he’s found on the exchange so far offered a 415 percent jump in premium, to $948 a month.

See also here for more on that story. The bottom line is that the White House KNEW they were lying but continued to deceive the American people.

We’ve seen these demon-possessed lies from these same demon-possessed socialist liars before. And we have proven that we are damn-fool and depraved enough to fall for the same lies from the same liars all over again.

Again, FAR MORE people are getting termination/cancellation notices from their insurance companies – proving that Barack Obama is an abject LIAR who BETRAYED the American people – than are paying for insurance through ObamaCare. The vast majority of the people who are “enrolling” are signing up for the taxpayer-funded Medicaid expansion that will cost the nation untold TRILLIONS.

Obama lied to you. Democrats lied to you. The Democrat Party is a moral disease that is killing America.

This is a nation that is at – and probably past – a crossroad: we either need to vote conservative Republican or we need to vote Democrat so we can collapse and accept the mark of the beast and burn in hell for all eternity. It is just as simple as that at this point.

WASHINGTON — Seeking an elusive middle ground, President Barack Obama is proposing a 2014 budget that embraces tax increases abhorred by Republicans as well as reductions, loathed by liberals, in the growth of Social Security and other benefit programs.

The plan, if ever enacted, could touch almost all Americans. The rich would see tax increases, the poor and the elderly would get smaller annual increases in their benefits, and middle income taxpayers would slip into higher tax brackets despite Obama’s repeated vows not to add to the tax burden of the middle class. His proposed changes, once phased in, would mean a cut in Social Security benefits of nearly $1,000 a year for an average 85-year-old, smaller cuts for younger retirees.

Obama proposed much the same without success to House Speaker John Boehner in December. The response Friday was dismissive from Republicans and hostile from liberals, labor and advocates for the elderly.

As usual, Obama is as politically brilliant as he is completely morally depraved.

He recognizes that the elderly now overwhelmingly vote Republican – because as stupid as our elderly are today, they are smarter than the young punks whom Obama owns.

Obama realizes what many Democrats in their districts don’t: that the elderly aren’t Obama worshippers.

And that therefore the elderly are blasphemers who deserve to die.

What group DOES vote for Obama? The ignorant young punks.

And what do the ignorant young punks want?

They want socialism. They want Obama to take care of them.

What is getting in the way of the godless socialist State that the young want? Old people – and the benefits being consumed by old people.

How can young people get free health care when the old are getting most of the government bennies? How can young people ever hope to have a viable Social Security system when the system promised to the elderly is bankrupting America?

The answer is that if you kill off all the elderly, you can make the same false promises to the young that the FDR generation of Democrats once made to the elderly of today.

You can find these quotes along with many others in the articles above, but let me start with the words of lifelong Democrat and Obama supporter Robert Reich:

“Thank you so much for coming this afternoon. I’m so glad to see you and I would like to be president. Let me tell you a few things on health care. Look, we have the only health care system in the world that is designed to avoid sick people. And that’s true and what I’m going to do is that I am going try to reorganize it to be more amenable to treating sick people but that means you, particularly you young people, particularly you young healthy people…you’re going to have to pay more.

“Thank you. And by the way, we’re going to have to, if you’re very old, we’re not going to give you all that technology and all those drugs for the last couple of years of your life to keep you maybe going for another couple of months. It’s too expensive…so we’re going to let you die.”

And here’s now-former White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel’s brother, Ezekiel Emanuel, whom Obama appointed as OMB health policy adviser in addition to being picked to serve on the Federal Council on Comparative Effectiveness Research:

“When implemented, the Complete Lives system produces a priority curve on which individuals aged between roughly 15 and 40 years get the most substantial chance, whereas the youngest and oldest people get chances that are attenuated… The Complete Lives system justifies preference to younger people because of priority to the worst-off rather than instrumental value.”

“Attenuated” means, “to make thin; to weaken or reduce in force, intensity, effect, quantity, or value.” Attenuated care would be reduced or lessened care. Dare I say it, in this context it clearly means, “rationed care.”

And “rationed care” means death panels. Which again for the record überliberal Paul Krugman says are an essential part of ObamaCare – all previous Democrat lies to the contrary.

I’ve been saying it all along.

I couldn’t understand why Democrats refused to take ANY of the corrective actions necessary to save Medicare – which will go bankrupt and collapse by 2016. And now Social Security – which is now in debt to the tune of tens of billions of dollars a year. A few minor changes could have saved these programs – but Democrats are in lock-fascist step determined NOT to allow those changes.

Understand: my PARENTS are on these programs. As terrible and as godawful as these programs are given the private-sector alternatives that Democrats refused to allow or even consider, they were the only path for my parents’ – and millions and millions of other people’s parents’ – retirement. Republicans proposed to gradually phase in reduced benefits beginning for those who had at least ten working years remaining to prepare alternative strategies (which would also give the country time to prepare those alternatives). Current retirees would have been untouched.

Democrats refused to make any changes and falsely and frankly demonically demagogued the lie that Republicans were trying to kill old people (again, their changes wouldn’t have affected ANY “old people.” I couldn’t understand why Democrats would allow the systems that THEY created to simply implode.

If we just made a few minor changes, we could keep these programs going. It is insane that Democrats refuse to make those changes. The reason that Europe is going through all the “austerity” crap is because they did what the Democrats are doing now in America; they refused to make minor changes and then they went bankrupt and now there is no way out of their crisis.

I now DO understand the reason Democrats won’t make the changes we need when there’s still time to make those changes: Democrats plan to turn on the elderly whom they promised they would take care of through these programs. When they collapse – and they surely will – Democrats will “pivot” to the young voters and leave the elderly to die.

Democrats seized power by lying to the people who are now “the elderly.” They can now leave those elderly to perish and sell their lies to a whole new generation of truly stupid young people.

Barack Obama realizes that he will profit politically if he wages his style of fearmongering and divisive campaigning and pits the young against the old (just as he pitted minorities against white people and women against men and the poor against the rich). He realizes that he doesn’t need the elderly any more than he needs white people or the rich.

By increasingly pointing out that the elderly have an obligation to die so that the young can inherit the earth (and the socialism), Obama knows he can seize the young vote for the Democrat Party. He will promise them the benefits that used to belong to the elderly. Which means the elderly have got to go.

I’ve pointed this out again and again: D. James Kennedy prophetically warned:

“Watch out, grandpa! Because the generation that survived abortion will one day come after you!”

You’re about to pay for your wickedness and selfishness in allowing the holocaust of 56 million murdered babies since Roe v. Wade in 1973, old people. The day is coming when you are going to be told to shove off and die with dignity so that young Obama voters can take your place.

And you are going to deserve it, even as God begins to stockpile His wrath against the final and most wicked generation of Americans who will vote for your deaths by the millions the same way you voted for babies’ deaths by the millions.

You watch with growing horror, elderly Americans: Obama is going to use his mastery of political rhetoric – based entirely on his never EVER underestimating the stupidity and wickedness of the America people – to slowly begin to turn on you. It will be just like homosexual marriage – or as great American pastor John MacArthur called it, “the Party platform of Romans Chapter One - in which Obama begins by unequivocally stating that he is opposed to it (see here and here), and then saying he’s “evolving”in spite of what he’d promised, and finally claiming that he is completely for what he had previously said that he was completely against. And then he’ll claim that anybody who used to hold the very position that he himself used to hold is evil. He’s going to frame turning on the elderly in “moral” terms, as an obligation to young people who are being deprived of benefits. And when he’s got the young behind him, he will demand that you perish in miserable deaths due to medical neglect and the confiscation of benefits that you banked your retirements upon.

Because this is God damn America, and you helped set it up.

Now you get to find out what it’s like to be “aborted.” Because it’s coming for YOU. You’re going to be the next group of death camp Jews. You’re going to be the next group of non-humans to perish.

It’s a truly fascinating thing. Had we “gone over the cliff,” do you know what would have happened? We would have returned to the Clinton tax rates.

What is truly remarkable is that the Clinton tax rates are now nearly universally viewed by Democrats as having been 98% pure, distilled evil. Because the Democrat Party has now been saying that Americans can’t afford to pay the stupid and evil tax rates that Democrats once demanded they pay.

But what would have been stupid and evil and harmful to the American economy for 98% of the population is in fact true for 100% of the population. It is simply a gargantuan lie to try to argue that the laws of economics – that when you tax something you invariably get LESS of it – is true for 98% but is a lie for 100%.

Yes, it is a fact of history that the Republican Party under George W. Bush saved America with the tax cuts that helped the middle class grow more and spend more. And it is now a fact of history that Democrats are now implicitly saying that the Clinton tax rates were 98% evil and counterproductive to a growing economy. Democrats were completely wrong about their high tax rates; but Democrats are liars who won’t EVER admit they were wrong. Instead they merely continually shift their demonization and demagoguery to a different target without ever admitting that it was only a relative few years ago that Democrats were attacking the middle class with high taxes that are suddenly now universally recognized as evil.

Isn’t it amazing how Obama, the Democrats and the mainstream media propaganda actually just claimed credit for 98% of the Bush tax cuts while still blaming Republicans as evil for creating the very thing that Democrats are on record as now being 98% for? How does this kind of falsehood pass for truth???

And keep in mind that Bill Clinton – who largely presided over a good economy with the help of Republicans who controlled both the House and the Senate – said “the era of big government is over.” Obama reversed that and now America will pay dearly for it.

It is a fact of history that Democrats are now demanding that we keep 98% of Bush’s tax cuts while simultaneously taking credit for them. While amazingly still saying that the Bush tax cuts – which they now say were 98% good – are still evil.

History is now replete, full, satiated, gluttonously gorged with examples of Democrats’ stupid tax claims doing the very opposite of what they claimed it would do. The most infamous example is the luxury tax or so-called “yacht tax” on the rich. Democrats assured Americans that the rich could certainly pay a little more (there’s a line that stupid people keep arguing, isn’t it?) to own luxury items. Democrats saw the government getting more and the rich paying “more of their fair share” (there’s another stupid line of demagoguery for you). What in FACT happened was that it turned out that, guess what, rich people AVOID TAXES just like everybody else tends to do.

The nation’s luxury-boat builders, many clinging to their businesses after two years of plunging sales, finally got some good news last week.

President Bush, in his budget proposals, asked Congress to repeal the 10 percent luxury tax on yachts priced at more than $100,000 (and also on private planes that cost more than $250,000). The repeal, which Congress is likely to approve, would be retroactive to Feb. 1.

Since the tax took effect in January 1990, hundreds of builders of large and small boats have spoken of it as a stake driven into the heart of an industry already suffering from the recession, tighter bank rules on financing and fallout from the gulf war.

In the last two years, about 100 builders of luxury boats — recreational craft costing more than $100,000 — cut their operations severely and laid off thousands of workers. Some builders filed for protection from creditors under Chapter 11 of the Federal Bankruptcy Code.

Now, sales personnel and owners of marine companies are hoping they will be swamped by buyers who have held off in the expectation that the tax will be repealed.

The 10 percent tax applies to the amount of the cost above $100,000, so that a boat selling for $300,000 carries a $20,000 luxury tax. That tax is in addition to any state and local taxes. […]

Also, boat prices have dropped as much as 40 to 50 percent, interest rates have fallen and some lenders have begun to offer financing, though on very strict terms.

“The luxury tax really hurt us,” said William J. Healey, the president of the Viking Yacht Company in New Gretna, N.J.

He gestured toward a few big luxury boats being built there. A 50-foot boat costing $800,000 is bound for Italy; a $1 million yacht may be sold in Japan. A 65-foot motor yacht costing $1.3 million is bound for Greece.

The business from overseas, developed in the last two years, is enabling Viking to limp along, its work force cut to 150 workers from 800. “Very fortunately, it has helped us weather the downturn,” Mr. Healey said as he pointed to two production lines that have been inactive for several years.

Domestic demand fell so sharply that a year ago Viking shut an operation in Tampa, Fla., that employed 800 workers. The plant was built in the boom of the 1980’s, when most boat makers could not keep up with demand.

Yeah, that’s right, stupid liberal. Raising taxes on the rich a few percent won’t hurt anybody. They can afford it.

And if you’re either stupid or demon-possessed, you still believe that damn Marxist class warfare lie. But people who prefer the truth and have a clue about something called “history” sure don’t.

There’s a second and even more harmful reason that Obama won’t raise more revenue as he falsely claims: because he’s going to be targeting and attacking the small businesses that create jobs. Yes, it’s true on one level that 97% of small businesses won’t see their taxes shoot up and force them to lay off workers and cut back to pay the dictator. But as is often true, another word for “lie” is “statistic.” Because here’s the thing: THAT THREE PERCENT OF THE BUSINESSES DO MOST OF THE ACTUAL HIRING.

Out of 27,281,452 total firms, 21,351,320 are listed as “nonemployer firms.” Which means that 78.23 percent of all small businesses hire ZERO employees. So when Obama says that 97% of small businesses won’t be affected by his tax hike, please understand that the whopping majority of those businesses that won’t be affected aren’t hiring anybody. Another 3,617,764 small businesses have no more than four employees. Those small businesses that hire zero workers plus those small businesses that hire no more than four workers constitute 91.5% of ALL small businesses.

Here’s a more relevant way to look at it. When you consider the businesses that employ more than four people, you are looking at businesses that hire 94.97 percent of ALL the workers who work for small businesses. And while not all of the small businesses that hire between 5-9 employees are going to be paying higher taxes as a result of Obama’s class warfare on small businesses, most of them do. And virtually none of the businesses that hire more than ten employees are going to earn less than $250,000 a year.

So, yeah, the kid who is an “independent contractor” working his paper route won’t be paying more taxes under Obama’s class warfare plan. That’s great. But the overwhelming majority of small businesses (defined as businesses employing 499 or fewer workers) are going to get the crap beat out of them.

So Obama and Democrats like to point out that 97% of small businesses won’t be affected by their tax hikes. But more than 78% of small businesses in his “97 percent” figure are “nonemployer firms” and hire ZERO workers. So no jobs. And when you look at the businesses that hire workers, you are looking overwhelmingly at the businesses that are going to be hit by these new tax hikes. That is simply a FACT. And it is simply a FACT that they are going to be forced to raise their prices to accommodate their rising costs of doing business, which will in turn reduce demand for their products or services, which will then in turn force them to lay off workers because of aforementioned reduced demand.

So what Obama and the Democrats just did is savagely attack the only people who have any chance at creating more job opportunities and bringing the US economy off its back and onto its feet again.

Keep in mind that in pimping his ObamaCare, Obama promised that premiums wouldn’t go up; he promised that if you like your doctor, you could keep your doctor; he promised that he wouldn’t tax the middle class. He lied about EVERYTHING. And he is lying to you now. Because he has over and over again demonstrated that he is a liar without shame, without honesty, without decency and without integrity.

But we’re just getting warmed up describing how truly godawful this “deal” is.

Obama – even on his regime’s own calculations – will only get 8 1/2 days of additional tax revenue by attacking the rich and sabotaging the US economy by hurting job creators. The problem when you consider Obama’s trillion-plus dollar deficits every single year of his entire presidency is that he refused to do a damn thing about the OTHER 356.5 days of the year.

Again, Barack Obama is a liar and a hypocrite without shame, without decency, without honor and without integrity. He is shameless. The Democrat Party is shameless. And the mainstream media which protects both with their propaganda machine are shameless.

The U.S. fiscal gap, calculated (by us) using theCongressional Budget Office’s realistic long-term budget forecast — the Alternative Fiscal Scenario — is now $222 trillion. Last year, it was $211 trillion. The $11 trillion difference — this year’s true federal deficit — is 10 times larger than the official deficit and roughly as large as the entire stock of official debt in public hands.

It’s funny, in a sad, pathetic, ironic sort of way: Democrats demonize Republicans for trying to protect America and her interests abroad with a strong national defense. But the only thing the Constitution specifically ordered the federal government to “provide for the common defense.” And note that word, “provide.” It means, “pay for to provide.” The same liberals who demonize us for doing what common sense and the Constitution alike command us to do point to the phrase “promote the general welfare.” Do you get that difference between “provide” and “promote.” If you ask me to provide something, I’m on the hook for it in a financial way. That’s what it means to be a provider. If you want me to promote something, I’m going to say nice things about it and cheerlead for it. But that’s all. And so like everything else, Democrats turned the Constitution, basic morality and true Christianity on its head and made what is wrong right and what is right wrong.

If liberals were actually to “promote the general welfare,” they would cheerlead the private economy and encourage growth by keeping taxes low for those who are willing to work hard so they can keep what they earn. And then, with the minimum size and minimum amount of regulation, they would get the hell out of the way.

What Democrats “promote” is the general cancer instead.

And that mindset became a rotting cancer that is just about to consume and kill the patient America.

This nation is doomed. And if you voted for Obama, you are one of the people who doomed it. We cannot possibly pay these debts that will ultimately bankrupt this country but only after our children and their children are forced to bear the burden and suffer because of your self-righteous and sanctimonious greed a.k.a. “your entitlement mindset.” And one day you will stand before a holy God and answer for the fact that you are a toxic human being whose soul swims in every kind of lie. Because that’s what Obama voters are: bad people who hate the truth and who prefer lies. Aside from your dishonesty, you are greedy and hypocritical – feeling yourself entitled to seize other people’s money when you would scream if your own money were taken from you. And aside from your dishonesty, greed and hypocrisy you are hurting the poor who ought to be helped. Because as I pointed out above – and thoroughly document with the article I linked you to stating it – when you seize the wealth of private citizens who overwhelmingly worked hard and then planned well and then worked hard some more to get that wealth, you end up hurting the very poor you falsely profess to be helping. Because you force businesses large and small alike to reduce their workers. You rob the poor of dignity by preventing them from being able to find jobs. And then you cynically exploit their desperation to get them to vote Democrat so they can be on welfare for life as long as they continue voting Democrat. Oh, you will one day be forced to give an account for all of it, rest assured. And you will be giving that account to a Someone who knows the truth from all of your lies and your slander.

In sixty days this “fiscal cliff deal” that the mainstream media is so damn giddy about will come boomaranging back in the form of a massive political crisis caused by Obama’s morally insane and fiscally evil out-of-control spending binge.

Republicans were maneuvered into an impossible rhetorical battle against a master demagogic rhetorician. They were demonized as “the party who was willing to force everybody’s taxes to go up over the wealthiest two percent of the country.” When how the hell were the Democrats not “the party who was willing to force everybody’s taxes to go up over the wealthiest two percent of the country”??? Weren’t Democrats threatening to go off the cliff unless they got to attack the top two percent of earners? How were they not doing the very thing they slandered the Republicans for doing???

This country is going to shut down in sixty days over that “spending issue” that Obama and the Democrats absolutely refused to deal with. Because this “deal” did nothing to slow down the debt, nothing to slow down Obama’s shocking deficits, nothing to avert a debt ceiling showdown and nothing to avert the REAL fiscal cliff of Obama’s sequestration plan.

The markets that stupidly surged today will just as stupidly collapse then. Because anybody who isn’t a fool should see this confrontation over insane and immoral debt coming.

Meanwhile, it is God damn America, full speed ahead to ruin. And then the Antichrist and the Tribulation will come.

“The problem is, is that the way Bush has done it over the last eight years is to take out a credit card from the Bank of China in the name of our children, driving up our national debt from $5 trillion for the first 42 presidents – #43 added $4 trillion by his lonesome, so that we now have over $9 trillion of debt that we are going to have to pay back — $30,000 for every man, woman and child. That’s irresponsible. It’s unpatriotic.” — Barack Obama, 3 July 2008

That deficit that Obama promised to cut in half was $455 billion. That is a fact as can be seen below. Not only did Obama NOT keep his self-righteous, lying, hypocrite promise to cut the deficit in half in his first term, he has more than doubled that deficit each year of his presidency and one year MORE THAN TRIPLED it. And not only has Obama given us trillion-PLUS dollar deficits every single year of his presidency, but in fact he has created the disastrous future of trillion dollar deficits as far as the eye can see until America collapses.

It has become very difficult to estimate Obama’s and the Democrat Party’s deficits. Because they have wickedly refused to even BOTHERto pass a budget as required by law for 1,224 days. Republicans in the House have done their job every year they have governed, both during the time that they controlled both branches of the Congress in 2006 (when the final Republican congressional budget under Bush was just $162 billion) and since they retook the House in 2010. But Democrats who control the Senate have refused to do their duty and pass ANY budget at ALL.

That. Just. Happened. There’s been a bit of waffling on when exactly it occurred between last Friday and Tuesday, but regardless, that ship has sailed.

Total U.S. government debt eclipsed $16 trillion for the first time Friday, new government data show, as total federal borrowing continues marching toward the $16.394 trillion borrowing limit.

The Treasury Department said total government debt hit $16,015,769,788,215.80 on Friday, up $25 billion from the day before. The amount of federal debt subject to the borrowing limit is actually slightly less, as it doesn’t include several types of borrowing, and it stood at $15.977 trillion on Friday.

Ah yes, remember when Obama promised he’s cut the deficit in half by the end of his first term in office? Heh, that ol’ chestnut. In actuality, President Obama has added over $5.4 trillion to the debt during less than four years in office, more than any other president and approximately a trillion more than President Bush during his full two terms in office. So, there’s that.

The U.S. fiscal gap, calculated (by us) using theCongressional Budget Office’s realistic long-term budget forecast — the Alternative Fiscal Scenario — is now $222 trillion. Last year, it was $211 trillion. The $11 trillion difference — this year’s true federal deficit — is 10 times larger than the official deficit and roughly as large as the entire stock of official debt in public hands.

This election isn’t a “do-over.” The odds are that Obama has already fatally wounded America with his insane spending and his bizarre “logic” and his constant fracturing of America on the basis of race and gender and income. But if you vote for Obama now, you are literally voting for the suicide of America.

Democrats rammed through a Social Security boondoggle seventy years ago that has exploded. It didn’t matter that there was a far better private plan that a Democrat actually proposed; FDR wanted the Democrat to control America until it went bankrupt and he got his way. The same was true of Medicare and Medicaid; there were FAR better options, but Democrats wanted to socialize America and they got their way. Now people will die if these programs collapse, and mark my words they WILL collapse because of Democrats who demonize the issue while refusing to fix the problems or allow them to be fixed while the coming bankruptcy looms closer and closer.

Democrats are demon-possessed liars who try to make their fellow fools believe that George Bush bankrupted America. Bush’s spending isn’t a tenth of one percent of the debt bomb that Democrats have planted in the bowels of America. And those bombs that the Democrats so expertly planted are now beginning to explode and rip this country apart.

Some time back I started citing this little factoid published in the reliably liberal Los Angeles Times:

The staggering amount of unfunded debt stands to crowd out funding for many popular programs. Reform will take something sadly lacking in the Legislature: political courage.

The state of California’s real unfunded pension debt clocks in at more than $500 billion, nearly eight times greater than officially reported.

That’s the finding from a study released Monday by Stanford University’s public policy program, confirming a recent report with similar, stunning findings from Northwestern University and the University of Chicago.

The California State Legislature Senate consists of 25 Democrats and 15 Republicans and the Assembly consisting of 52 Democrats and 28 Republicans to go with a liberal governor nicknamed “Moonbeam.” Former RINO Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger tried and was broken by the Democrat majority and the unions and never dared to raise his hands against Democrats or their union masters again.

California will burn in hell because it is Democrat, which is another way of saying that it is half completely insane and half genuinely evil.

That pension bomb was planted by DEMOCRATS. These cockroaches have KILLEDCalifornia. Three big California cities have now declared bankruptcy because there is simply no way to pay Democrat Party-controlled unions their incredibly huge pensions. And Los Angeles is right behind them. Something between 1 in 5 and 1 in 4 California cities are now facing bankruptcy. City after city are now rolling over onto their bellies because the Democrat Party is the most corrupt entity in human history. And I say that because nothing short of the most evil and most dishonest and most corrupt party on earth could have succeeded in murdering the golden goose that was America. When you consider California, with all of its major global ports and all of its inherent economic advantages, only the most stupid people in history could possibly bankrupt it. But Democrats have succeeded wildly.

Unions are giving 92% of their contributions to Democrats. Democrats, in exchange and in quid pro quo, have given benefits and pensions to the unions that support them. And it is a vicious cycle that has continued and will continue until the American people hunt down every single Democrat and burn them alive for what they did to their country.

We’re most of the way through four years of God damn America. And liberals want more God damn America until there isn’t any America left for God to damn.

The Bible describes this mindset of being utterly determined to pursue wickedness and failure no matter what, just as it describes perfectly the coming hell that big government will produce in the coming Antichrist:

“A third of mankind was killed by these three plagues, by the fire and the smoke and the brimstone which proceeded out of their mouths. For the power of the horses is in their mouths and in their tails; for their tails are like serpents and have heads, and with them they do harm. The rest of mankind, who were not killed by these plagues, did not repent of the works of their hands, so as not to worship demons, and the idols of gold and of silver and of brass and of stone and of wood, which can neither see nor hear nor walk; and they did not repent of their murders nor of their sorceries nor of their immorality nor of their thefts” — Revelation 9:18-21

“Then the fifth angel poured out his bowl on the throne of the beast, and his kingdom became darkened; and they gnawed their tongues because of pain, and they blasphemed the God of heaven because of their pains and their sores; and they did not repent of their deeds.” — Revelation 16:10-11

You’d think that the instinct of self-preservation alone would make these people turn from their ideas, but no. Evil is a disease that consumes to the bone.

We’re seeing the same kind of demonic deception going on now in North Korea. This is a nation that is completely dark at night because socialism has so wildly failed it is beyond unreal, but they worship Dear Leader and when he dies they worship the son of Dear Leader:

And that is exactly the way that Democrats are. The only difference is the name of their “Dear Leader.” His abject failure is the same.

We’re getting just a little tiny taste of the hell that is coming. As the Antichrist leads the world (America most definitely included as Democrats gleefully worship the beast and take his mark) into hell and the people continue to refuse to repent no matter what happens, so also we now live in an America in which about half of the nation will follow Obama right into abject ruination.

All of the major news outlets are reporting that the stimulus bill voted out of conference committee last night has a meager $789 billion price tag. This number is pure fantasy. No one believes that the increased funding for programs the left loves like Head Start, Medicaid, COBRA, and the Earned Income Tax Credit is in any way temporary. No Congress under control of the left will ever cut funding for these programs. So what is the true cost of the stimulus if these spending increases are made permanent?

Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) asked the Congressional Budget Office to estimate the impact of permanently extending the 20 most popular provisions of the stimulus bill. What did the CBO find? As you can see from the table below [visit link], the true 10 year cost of the stimulus bill $2.527 trillion in in spending with another $744 billion cost in debt servicing. Total bill for the Generational Theft Act: $3.27 trillion.

The actual cost of the Obama stimulus was simply completely unreported by the mainstream media which is now merely the propaganda wing of the Democrat Party. The numbers reported were pure lies.

So, as I’ve said over and over and over again, the “real” cost of the Obama stimulus was actually 308.75% higher than it was deceitfully sold to the American people as costing.

And now we see that that was a common theme of the Obama deception: because we find that the real Obama deficit wasn’t $1.3 trillion; no, it was actually $5.6 trillion. Which is, for the record, 330.77% higher than what we were told.

A picture is worth a thousand words, so here’s a picture of the the contrast between Obama’s bullcrap and actual reality:

The typical American household would have paid nearly all of its income in taxes last year to balance the budget if the government used standard accounting rules to compute the deficit, a USA TODAY analysis finds.

Under those accounting practices, the government ran red ink last year equal to $42,054 per household — nearly four times the official number reported under unique rules set by Congress.

A U.S. household’s median income is $49,445, the Census reports.

The big difference between the official deficit and standard accounting: Congress exempts itself from including the cost of promised retirement benefits. Yet companies, states and local governments must include retirement commitments in financial statements, as required by federal law and private boards that set accounting rules.

The deficit was $5 trillion last year under those rules. The official number was $1.3 trillion. Liabilities for Social Security, Medicare and other retirement programs rose by $3.7 trillion in 2011, according to government actuaries, but the amount was not registered on the government’s books.

Deficits are a major issue in this year’s presidential campaign, but USA TODAY has calculated federal finances under accounting rules since 2004 and found no correlation between fluctuations in the deficit and which party ran Congress or the White House.

Key findings:

•Social Security had the biggest financial slide. The government would need $22.2 trillion today, set aside and earning interest, to cover benefits promised to current workers and retirees beyond what taxes will cover. That’s $9.5 trillion more than was needed in 2004.

•Deficits from 2004 to 2011 would be six times the official total of $5.6 trillion reported.

•Federal debt and retiree commitments equal $561,254 per household. By contrast, an average household owes a combined $116,057 for mortgages, car loans and other debts.

“By law, the federal government can’t tell the truth,” says accountant Sheila Weinberg of the Chicago-based Institute for Truth in Accounting.

Jim Horney, a former Senate budget staff expert now at the liberal Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, says retirement programs should not count as part of the deficit because, unlike a business, Congress can change what it owes by cutting benefits or lifting taxes.

“It’s not easy, but it can be done. Retirement programs are not legal obligations,” he says.

In California, Democrat Governor Jerry Brown is talking about the “crisis” of the official state deficit of billion. That’s not even CLOSE to the truth; the actual deficit of just the Democrat-passed unfunded pension liabilities for their union allies is $500 billion ALL BY ITSELF.

The state of California’s real unfunded pension debt clocks in at more than $500 billion, nearly eight times greater than officially reported.

That’s the finding from a study released Monday by Stanford University’s public policy program, confirming a recent report with similar, stunning findings from Northwestern University and the University of Chicago.

It’s great if you’re in a government employee union and give all your campaign contributions to Democrats to keep the pork coming. It sucks if you’re the vast majority of Californians. Meanwhile, these same California voters keep falling for the same trick, namely, Democrats keep promising that they’ll redistribute the wealth of others and give it to people who vote Democrat.

Until California collapses under the weight of Democrat lies and burns in hell.

There’s only one term to describe this sheer lunatic deception: demon possessed. The Democrat Party today is the party of hell. One day soon Democrats will worship the Antichrist who will promise the big government Utopia of their dreams and take his mark and ultimately end up in the eternal fire that they truly deserve.

As bad as California looks, the actual debt picture of the United States as a country makes that $500 billion in uncounted unfunded liabilities to pro-Democrat labor unions look like nothin’.

Understand, this article was written in August 2011 when the national debt was “only” $14 trillion. It’s going to be $16 trillion by the end of the year.

Look at the actual debt faced by the United States. You’re on the hook for this:

When Standard & Poor’s reduced the nation’s credit rating from AAA to AA-plus, the United States suffered the first downgrade to its credit rating ever. S&P took this action despite the plan Congress passed this past week to raise the debt limit.

The downgrade, S&P said, “reflects our opinion that the fiscal consolidation plan that Congress and the administration recently agreed to falls short of what, in our view, would be necessary to stabilize the government’s medium-term debt dynamics.”

It’s those medium- and long-term debt problems that also worry economics professor Laurence J. Kotlikoff, who served as a senior economist on President Reagan’s Council of Economic Advisers. He says the national debt, which the U.S. Treasury has accounted at about $14 trillion, is just the tip of the iceberg.

“We have all these unofficial debts that are massive compared to the official debt,” Kotlikoff tells David Greene, guest host of weekends on All Things Considered. “We’re focused just on the official debt, so we’re trying to balance the wrong books.”

“If you add up all the promises that have been made for spending obligations, including defense expenditures, and you subtract all the taxes that we expect to collect, the difference is $211 trillion. That’s the fiscal gap,” he says. “That’s our true indebtedness.” […]

Quantitative easing is a hidden tax; the government inflates the currency which deflates the value of the existing dollars. The dollars systematically become worth less and we get inflation – which is actually running out of control (see here, here, here, here and – for the antidote – here).

Democrats love to blame Republicans for our debt. They are, as I have said before, demon-possessed liars. The programs that the Democrat Party rammed down our forcibly collectivist throats such as Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid are responsible for 99-plus percent of our massive unsustainable unpayable debt that will necessarily implode America.

If you want to put it in honest terms, the agreement the Democrats – the party of baby genocide – was this: “You vote for us, and we’ll give you benefits that we’ll sell the next generation into slavery to pay for.” And Democrats said, “Good! That’s what we want!”

Republicans can’t end Social Security or Medicare now; millions of Americans (including my own parents) count on these programs – even as bad as they are – for survival. Democrats made sure that there were no rivals and no possible alternatives. But we were right all along that it was a terrible program for America and we were right all along pointing out that there were FAR better alternatives.

If that isn’t bad enough, Democrats as we speak are trying to ensure that these programs – beginning with Medicare – go bankrupt. Because the Republicans who said these programs were a mistake to begin with are doing their best to try to sustain them, while Democrats are refusing to allow ANY of the fixes that will prevent them from GOING BANKRUPT NO LATER THAN 2017. Democrats are demanding that we keep these programs exactly as they are: and “exactly as they are” equals CATASTROPHIC BANKRUPTCY and collapse.

And fot further go on with the sheer deceit of the Democrat Party, we now know that ObamaCare was sold on such a whopping load of lies it is beyond unreal – such as a SEVENTEEN TRILLION DOLLAR FUNDING GAP between the ocean of lies and the actual reality.

As sick and as frankly terrifying the implications of all the above are, can I end on a hilarious note?

“And by the way, we’re going to pay down our debt in a way that is balanced and responsible. I inherited a trillion dollar deficit; I signed $2 trillion in spending cuts. My opponents won’t admit it because it runs contrary to, I guess, the only argument they have — but since I’ve been President, federal spending has actually risen at the lowest pace in nearly 60 years. (Applause.) It usually takes a Democrat to fix these problems after they have run up the tab.” (Applause.) — Barack Obama, May 24, 2012

In order to justify this demonic lie, Obama assumes a baseline that simply blames George Bush for all 2009 debt – INCLUDING OBAMA’S MASSIVE $3.27 TRILLION STIMULUSTHAT HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH GEORGE BUSH AND WHICH NOT ONE SINGLE REPUBLICAN VOTED FOR. Obama’s “baseline” further assumed that emergency programs such as the TARP – which Obama himself approved of and voted for – was now something that America had to repeat every single year in perpetuity as opposed to being what it was (a one-time emergency event). And so the following year when Obama didn’t spend another $700 billion in TARP, he was actually SAVING money. Oh, and to complete the point about how ridiculous this is, OBAMA ASKED FOR AND RECEIVED HALF THE $700 billion TARP funds. So Obama voted for it, Obama asked for it, and Obama spent it. But it’s Bush’s fault and so blame Bush.

Obama is artificially and demonically jacking up the “baseline” and then pointing to a lie to say “I’m only increasing spending by a little tiny bit.” He uses a bogus contrived statistic to claim he’s the lowest-spending president in sixty years when the actual reality is that he’s the highest-spending president in the history of the entire human race.

One of my favorite programs is the Wall Street Journal’s “Journal Editorial Report” which appears on Fox News. This segment helps you understand why:

When we come back, Paul Ryan takes on the religious left after 90 Georgetown professors attack his budget proposal as going against Catholic social teaching. Would Jesus Christ really have favored big government?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. PAUL RYAN, R-WISC., CHAIRMAN, HOUSE BUDGET COMMITTEE: Since we meet here today at America’s first Catholic university, I feel it is important to discuss how, as a Catholic in public life, my own personal thinking on these issues has been guided by my understanding of the church’s social teaching. Simply put, I don’t believe the preferential option for the poor means a preferential option for big government.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GIGOT: That was the House budget committee chairman, Paul Ryan, last week delivering an address at Georgetown University. The Wisconsin Republican has come under fire from some Catholics on the left who claimed the blue print goes against the church’s social teaching. Ninety Georgetown faculty and administrators sent a letter to Ryan in advance of the appearance that read, in part, “We would be remiss in our duty to you and our students if we did not challenge your continuing misuse of Catholic teaching to defend a budget that decimates food programs for struggling families, radically weakens protections for the elderly and sick, and gives more tax breaks to the wealthiest few.”

Dan, we’ll put it on the table, we are all Catholics here, grew up with Catholic social teaching.

DAN HENNINGER, COLUMNIST & DEPUTY EDITOR: Right.

GIGOT: To my mind, the news is not so much Jesuits or Georgetown faculty by conservatives. That is an old story. The news is that Ryan is willing to mix it up in return. Why is the debate important?

HENNINGER: The debate is important for — I tell you, Paul, it is important for reasons that both Ryan’s critics and Paul Ryan cite, both that letter and his talk said the same thing. One in six Americans are in poverty. Now, the Great Society started in 1965, creating programs to address poverty.

GIGOT: Lyndon Johnson.

HENNINGER: Lyndon Johnson.

GIGOT: Expansion of government.

HENNINGER: 50 years later, one in six Americans are in poverty? After spending trillions and trillions and trillions of dollars. Now Ryan is saying, first, we need accountability over why that has happened. Second, the three main programs — two main programs were created then, Medicare and Medicaid, adding in Social Security, the three major entitlements, the costs are so large that they drain money away from other programs for the poor.

GIGOT: Right.

HENNINGER: And Paul Ryan is saying we have to look at this and start making some decisions about where that is going. And that’s what he’s asking his critics to come and talk to him about.

GIGOT: This is what the late Senator, a Democrat, and a Catholic, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, used to make the case to me that — he said, Democrats should reform entitlements for seniors and Medicare and Social Security because, as Dan said, they are growing a huge wedge in the federal government. They will soak up, if trends continue, almost all the spending there is, the money there is, and there would be no money left for child care, for example, or education, or transportation, much less defense — good liberal purposes.

MARY ANASTASIA O’GRADY: But, Paul, why are you talking about facts?

(LAUGHTER)

Facts are not what the left has used to grow the government to what it is right now.

GIGOT: That’s one my big flaws.

(LAUGHTER)

O’GRADY: Really, you have to stop that.

Paul Ryan is freaking these guys out because he is taking their language and using it against them. He talks about how government dissolves the common good of society, how it dishonors the dignity of the human person. They think they own that language. And they think that language justifies big government. And he is saying, no, what you have done with this big government has actually undermined the things that Catholic teaching is supposed to be about. And that is why they are upset about it. If Paul Ryan, God forbid, gets the morale high ground, which they think they own, they will have to go back to the facts. And the facts will not support their position.

GIGOT: Important point, a lot of Republicans and conservatives tend to shrink, at least in my experience, from moral arguments. Look at my failing here, brining — talking practical points in fact.

(LAUGHTER)

But if — so you leave them a monopoly on the moral rhetoric, which is very power of in politics, on the left. Ryan is saying, I will meet you on that same battlefield.

HENNINGER: Well, he has created a phrase, which is the immorality of debt. And, in fact, Pope Benedict himself apparently said that if you live with debt that begins do impede the government’s ability to provide basic services, then you are living in untrue — Benedict is obviously talking about Europe.

GIGOT: Right.

HENNINGER: And Europe has had a tremendous commitment to social justice and social programs, and now we see Europe as a case study in struggling with trying to pay for commitments that simply they can no longer afford. And that is the issue that Paul Ryan is trying to raise. And he now is putting it in moral terms. And there is a moral issue there. And I think he deserve a good-faith answer.

GIGOT: If you look at Europe, one thing that we can see is when you have a debt crisis, and you finally have to do something about it, who suffers the most and first? It isn’t the Georgetown faculty.

(LAUGHTER)

It is the poor, who have their budgets and spending cut?

This is precisely the kind of moral argument that I have been advocating for on this blog. Here’s an example:

So let’s read the Bible and see what it says.

First there’s that little passage in 1 Samuel that warns about the danger of a socialist king who would seize what rightly belonged to the people if they wickedly chose big government instead of trusting in God (as I previously have pointed out):

The story of abusive big government is not a recent one. The prophet Samuel describes it in the Old Testament:

But the people refused to listen to Samuel. “No!” they said. “We want a king over us. Then we will be like all the other nations, with a king to lead us and to go out before us and fight our battles. — 1 Samuel 8:19-20
Who are we really rejecting? God said to Samuel:
“…it is not you they have rejected, Samuel, but they have rejected me as their king.” — 1 Samuel 8:7

Samuel told all the words of the LORD to the people who were asking him for a king. He said, “This is what the king who will reign over you will do: He will take your sons and make them serve with his chariots and horses, and they will run in front of his chariots. Some he will assign to be commanders of thousands and commanders of fifties, and others to plow his ground and reap his harvest, and still others to make weapons of war and equipment for his chariots. He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers. He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive groves and give them to his attendants. He will take a tenth of your grain and of your vintage and give it to his officials and attendants. Your menservants and maidservants and the best of your cattle and donkeys he will take for his own use. He will take a tenth of your flocks, and you yourselves will become his slaves. When that day comes, you will cry out for relief from the king you have chosen, and the LORD will not answer you in that day.” — 1 Samuel 8:10-18

The tenth of everything that God warned the people the king would take was on top of the tenth that belonged to God. Which is to say that the king would double their taxes in addition to treating the people like they belonged to him. Of course, that tyrant king was only seizing an additional tenth of his people’s wealth; imagine today, where in the highest-taxed states (which are all Democrat states, fwiw), some Americans are forced to pay more than half of their income in taxes. A mere extra tenth would be like a blessing to them.

It doesn’t sound as if the king whom we are told again and again – ”he will take” – is a good thing. Except on Al Sharpton’s and demonic Democrats warped and evil account of the passage.

Then there’s Jesus, who contrasted what the government confiscated with what belonged to God:

“Show me a denarius. Whose portrait and inscription are on it?” Caesar’s,” they replied. He said to them, “Then give to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s.” — Luke 20:24-25

Notice that what belongs to God isn’t also described as belonging to Caesar. What Jesus is MOST DEFINITELY NOT SAYING here is that giving unto Caesar is in any way, shape or form tantamount to giving to God. Unless, that is, you are a Democrat (i.e., a demonic bureaucrat), in which case worshipping the State is identical to worshipping God.

When Democrats want to let Obama take more of what belongs to us, they are giving their god his due, not the God of the Bible.

I once quoted Burton Folsom in his great book “New Deal Or Raw Deal?” It’s time to quote that passage again:

Throughout American history, right from the start, charity had been a state and local function. Civic leaders, local clergy, and private citizens, evaluated the legitimacy of people’s need in their communities or counties; churches and other organizations could then provide food, shelter, and clothing to help victims of fires or women abandoned by drunken husbands. Most Americans believed that the face-to-face encounters of givers and receivers of charity benefited both groups. It created just the right amount of uplift and relief, and discouraged laziness and a poor work ethic.

The Founders saw all relief as local and voluntary, and the Constitution gave no federal role for the government in providing charity. James Madison, in defending the Constitution, observed, “No man is allowed to be a judge in his own cause, because his interest would certainly bias his judgment and, not improbably, corrupt his integrity.” In other words, if relief, and other areas, were made functions of the federal government, the process would become politicized and politicians and deadbeats could conspire to trade votes for food” (New Deal or Raw Deal, page 76-77).

Prior to FDR, the American people took care of their OWN, family by family, town by town, county by county, state by state. They had NEVER had welfare, and in fact found the very concept of welfare distasteful. And I’m going to tell you right now that they were better, stronger people than we are as a result of that moral superiority and that faith in THE PEOPLE and not the GOVERNMENT.

Barack Obama – who gave virtually NOTHING to charity when giving would have demonstrated the character he proved he DIDN’T have – doesn’t trust the American people, or much care about them, for that matter. He doesn’t want to help people; he wants to grow the size of government. He wants only to make the state bigger and bigger and more and more powerful and controlling. Obama is angry because he doesn’t believe people should have the right to decide for themselves how much of their own money they “need”; HE wants to make that decision for them and then impose it on them so he can seize their money and redistribute it to people who will vote for him and for his party.

Whenever a Democrat calls for more taxes, understand that what they are really saying is that they believe that the government is too small and needs to become larger. And whenever they call for more taxes for the sake of helping people, what they are really saying is that you are a bad and immoral person who can’t and shouldn’t be trusted to help people in need and that it is better to take your money away from you and put it into the coffers of a big government socialist redistributionist agency which will piss it away on boondoggle programs that benefit the politically connected far more than they do the poor. And the fact that even as Barack Obama and the overwhelming Democrat majority that had dictatorial control of both branches of Congress made government bigger than it has ever been and yet blacks are now worse off than they’ve been for generations and women are being set way back is the icing on the cake of the proof of that fact. Liberals hurt the people they cynically and falsely claim to be helping – and then demagogically use the misery that they themselves created to accumulate even more power for themselves and their failed agenda.

The craziest thing of all is that this seventeen trillion-dollar unfunded spending is actually itself just a small fraction of the money that the most irresponsible political party in the history of the entire human race has spent without being able to even begin to pay for it:

Senate Republican staffers continue to look though the 2010 health care reform law to see what’s in it, and their latest discovery is a massive $17 trillion funding gap.

“The more we learn about the bill, the more we learn it is even more unaffordable than was suspected,” said Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions, the Republican’s budget chief in the Senate.

“The bill has to be removed from the books because we don’t have the money,” he said.

The hidden shortfall between new spending and new taxes was revealed just after Supreme Court justices grilled the law’s supporters about its compliance with the Constitution’s limits on government activity. If the court doesn’t strike down the law, it will force taxpayers find another $17 trillion to pay for the increased spending.

The $17 trillion in extra promises was revealed by an analysis of the law’s long-term requirements. The additional obligations, when combined with existing Medicare and Medicaid funding shortfalls, leaves taxpayers on the hook for an extra $82 trillion in health care obligations over the next 75 years.

The federal government has an additional $17 trillion unfunded gap in other obligations, including Social Security, bringing the total shortfall to $99 trillion.

The shortfall is different from existing debt. The federal government already owes $15 trillion in debt, including $5 trillion in funds borrowed during Obama’s term.

That $99 trillion in unfunded future expenses is more than five years of wealth generated by the United States, which now produces just over $15 trillion of value per year.

The $99 trillion funding gap is equal to almost 30 years of the current federal budget, which was $3.36 trillion for 2011.

The new $17 trillion funding gap is five times the current federal budget.

Currently, the Social Security system is $7 trillion in debt over the next 75 years, according to the Government Accountability Office.

Also, Medicare will eat up $38 trillion in future taxes, and Medicaid will consume another $2o trillion of the taxpayer’s wealth, according to estimates prepared by the actuarial office at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

The short-term cost of the Obamacare law is $2.6 trillion, almost triple the $900 billion cost promised by Obama and his Democratic allies, said Sessions.

The same review also showed the law added another $5 trillion in unfunded obligations for the Medicaid program.

“President Obama told the American people that his health law would cost $900 billion over ten years and that it would not add ‘one dime’ to the debt… this health law adds an entirely new obligation—one we cannot pay for—and puts the entire financing of the United States government in jeopardy,” Sessions said in a floor speech.

“We don’t have the money… We have to reduce the [obligations] that we have.”

That $2.6 trillion ObamaCare figure – again, making it THREE TIMES what Obama promised the American people it would cost – is not some “right-wing talking point”; it comes right out of the CBO:

A Congressional Budget Office report shows that the cost of implementing President Obama’s health care overhaul will reach $2.6 trillion over a ten-year period, a dramatic increase from the White House’s original estimate.

In 2009, Obama stated that the legislation would cost “around $900 billion over ten years.” The CBO’s original ten-year numbers weren’t that far off, but critics of the health care bill noted then that the cost would be much greater once projections accounted for its full implementation.

Democrats pushed the back-loaded bill into law in 2010, although it isn’t scheduled to be fully implemented until 2014.

“The fact that the outlook for the law continues to worsen so rapidly, even before it is implemented, is ominous,” Alabama Republican Sen. Jeff Sessions said in a statement.

“And despite massive tax hikes and new penalties to pay for the bill, which CBO estimates have risen by another $99 billion compared to their estimates last March … the president’s health spending law will add at least $700 billion to the deficit over its first 10 years. Sadly, it may prove much worse than that.”

The CBO arrived at its $2.6 trillion figure after measuring the effects of expanding coverage over its first ten years in effect. At its full scope the health care law will result in “4 million fewer Americans [having] employer-based coverage,” the CBO noted.

As insane as that $99 trillion figure is, it is the lowball estimate of the sheer extent of the fatal debt cycle that the Democrat Party is entirely responsible for. A peer-reviewed IMF publication cited the actual unfunded liabilities of the United States at over $200 trillion:

Boston University economist Laurence Kotlikoff says U.S. government debt is not $13.5-trillion (U.S.), which is 60 per cent of current gross domestic product, as global investors and American taxpayers think, but rather 14-fold higher: $200-trillion – 840 per cent of current GDP. “Let’s get real,” Prof. Kotlikoff says. “The U.S. is bankrupt.”

Writing in the September issue of Finance and Development, a journal of the International Monetary Fund, Prof. Kotlikoff says the IMF itself has quietly confirmed that the U.S. is in terrible fiscal trouble – far worse than the Washington-based lender of last resort has previously acknowledged. “The U.S. fiscal gap is huge,” the IMF asserted in a June report. “Closing the fiscal gap requires a permanent annual fiscal adjustment equal to about 14 per cent of U.S. GDP.”

This sum is equal to all current U.S. federal taxes combined. The consequences of the IMF’s fiscal fix, a doubling of federal taxes in perpetuity, would be appalling – and possibly worse than appalling.

Barack Obama is entering the fourth year of his presidency blaming George Bush. Think about that; the man has never once during his entire presidency taken personal responsibility. Not ONCE.

But that’s really par for this golf course; it’s just what socialists do.

Greece thinks all of its insane spending and refusal to see the cliff rushing up on them while they stupidly continued acting like Democrats in America is all Germany’s fault. Because, you see, Germany won’t give them more stupid money so they can keep being stupid. The Germans have money; and of course you know the script: the rich are ALWAYS to blame. Even if they’re in a whole other country:

Greece and Germany’s he said/she said over debt crisisBerlin sees Athens as not living up to its end of the bailout bargain; Greece perceives a campaign of punishment by the Germans on its already-reeling economy.
By Henry Chu and Anthee Carassava, Los Angeles Times
February 14, 2012, 7:47 p.m.

Reporting from Berlin and Athens— To hear many Germans tell it, Greece is a land blessed with sunshine but cursed with a lying, cheating government that routinely breaks its promises and expects others to pick up the pieces.

The rest of Europe has doled out billions of dollars in emergency loans to keep Greece afloat, but Athens, the Germans say, has consistently failed to deliver on pledges to slash its bloated bureaucracy, sell off state enterprises, go after tax evaders and overhaul its uncompetitive economy.

Yet ask Greeks what’s happening to their country, and many respond with yowls of pain and anger — directed in large part toward Germany. Berlin, they fume, is a tyrannical taskmaster whose only motivation now seems to be to inflict as much punishment as possible on a country whose economy has already been pushed into free fall.

“What more do they want from us?” said Sophia Sigri, a 70-year-old pensioner in Athens. “This crisis has gone way beyond numbers, fiscal policies and austerity measures. Our national dignity now is at stake. Do they want to rob us of that, too?”

The divergent views have become the backdrop against which Europe’s long-running debt crisis, now in its third year, is playing out. And the fact that such attitudes appear to be hardening in Berlin and Athens, with animosity and distrust deepening on both sides, is complicating the search for a solution.

Finance ministers of the 17 Eurozone nations are scheduled to consult Wednesday in a conference call that investors hope will result in the provisional approval of a second bailout for Greece, worth about $170 billion. Without the rescue package, the country could slide into default by mid-March, with potentially disastrous consequences for the global economy.

But many in Athens believe that present conditions aren’t much better.

Though acknowledging that their government has missed some of the tough financial targets set by international lenders, they say the repeated rounds of stiff austerity cuts have resulted in a spiraling recession during which homelessness, hunger and suicide rates have all gone up.

Public outrage boiled over this week into some of Athens’ worst rioting since the start of the crisis in 2009, with dozens of buildings set afire and trashed by rock-throwing youths alongside a peaceful demonstration by thousands. Greek lawmakers swallowed hard and bowed anyway to the demands of their European partners, approving drastic cuts in wages and pensions and the elimination of 15,000 public-sector jobs this year alone, at a time when the unemployment rate already tops 20%.

German and other European officials welcomed the measures. But they warned that they are not enough for them to approve a second bailout Wednesday, insisting that Greece identify $430 million more in spending cuts and seal a deal with private investors on taking a loss on their holdings of Greek debt.

To those Germans who regard Greeks as mendacious, cavalier shirkers of duty, critics point to figures like those released Tuesday showing that, in the last quarter of 2011, Greece’s economy contracted by a whopping 7% compared with the same period a year earlier.

Many Greeks have already made heavy sacrifices as the result of one governmental austerity measure after another. The citizens of any other developed country, they say, would surely erupt in anger as well if confronted with the same calamitous drop in their standard of living.

Anti-German rhetoric and images are now a staple in Greece, where politicians mutter darkly of German jackboots and protesters call Chancellor Angela Merkel a Nazi.

“You’d think they would show some compassion for the fact that we went gentle on them after World War II. But no, they want to punish us now,” declared Fotis Stathatos, 56, an unemployed construction worker.

Germans bristle at such statements, even as they speak of the need to get even tougher on Greece. Athens is no longer a trustworthy partner but rather a huge sinkhole, many Germans say. They complain that Greek officials have happily accepted outside help while shrugging off solemn promises to lay off thousands of civil servants, privatize state assets and strengthen tax collection.

The lack of follow-through has prompted suggestions from Germany — unwelcome in Greece — that a European Union commissioner be given power over Athens’ budget and that a separate escrow account be set up to earmark government funds for repaying debt and not for frivolous spending elsewhere.

“The only thing we require is that Greece stick to its commitments,” Michael Georg Link, Germany’s deputy foreign minister, said in an interview in his Berlin office. “Nobody was forced into the European Union, and we will force nobody out of the European Union or the Eurozone. But once you’re in, you have to stick to the rules.”

Link said that Italy, Spain and Portugal have also made commitments to difficult reforms.

[…]

In Athens, residents stretched to the breaking point have grown tired of being repeatedly told to do more to atone for their financial sins. Further rage of the kind that broke out this week could await a country already teetering on the brink of economic ruin, some analysts warn.

“Greeks feel like they are being spanked for behaving badly. They’re still feeling the pain of that,” said Dimitris Mavros of the MRB polling company. “But once that beating stops or subsides … then they may strike back.”

Damn rich Germans who won’t keep pouring their hard-earned money down a sink-hole to fund liberals in their moral and mental insanity.

Of course, liberals call Republicans horrible stuff too, like “terrorists” and “demons.” Because if you try to stop a Democrat from spending other peoples’ money, they get real nasty the way crack addicts get nasty when somebody is standing in the way of their crack.

But of course it’s even easier for Greeks to call Germans who won’t give Greece more of Germany’s money “Nazis.”

When you see all the rioting and burning and violence, you know that it’s just around the corner here as “Occupy” fascists plot the same kind of crap the Greek fascists are plotting now.

For the left, violence has ALWAYSfollowed the demonizing.

Let me tell you something: Greece didn’t have to come to this. The problem was they kept seeing warning signs and kept on ignoring them. Just as the Democrat Party and Barack Obama are doing right now in America.

If Greece had taken responsibility a few years ago and made relatively small and simple changes, they could have averted all of this terrible pain now. But liberals in Greece demonized such modest reforms, just as liberals in America have been doing. And as a result nothing got changed and then all of a sudden it was too late. The same way that one day real soon it’s going to be too late here in America.

We either get these liberal vermin out of office, or we’ll be in the sad way that Greece is because IT didn’t bother to get rid of its liberals until it was way, WAAAAAAY to late.

Consider Social Security and Medicare: America’s actual debt is over $211 TRILLION. There is no way in a thousand hells we can possibly ever pay that back. Democrats cursed us with this mess; conservatives tried to warn them. If you go back to the 1930s when FDR was ramming his political boondoggle ponzi scheme through Congress, you’ll discover that even DEMOCRATS warned it would ultimately be a disaster. Meanwhile, Medicare – the socialist takeover of health care began in the 1960s that Obama wants to now replace with his even BIGGER socialist takeover of health care – WILL go bankrupt no later than 2017 and cause catastrophic death in the population of seniors who depend on it.

Republicans have tried to propose fixes that would save both programs, but this is the thanks they get:

Democrats demonize Republicans – I mean LITERALLY demonize, given the whole “demons” thing – whenever we try to do the right thing. They call us “terrorists” for trying to slow down the insane rush to spending. I mean, how DARE we block the “progress” they’re trying to make.

The Left now acts as if this never happened. For instance, in a recent television appearance, liberal commentator Bill Press argued that–rather than noisy disagreement–”Americans want discussion” on health-care reform. Who could disagree with that sentiment–except, perhaps, the Obama administration, which pushed Congress to rush through legislation by early August? This timeline was clearly aimed at preempting discussion and presenting the public with a “done deal” on health reform. As one protester put it, the president spent more time choosing a dog than he did discussing health-care reform.

Likewise, Mr. Press complained that opponents hadn’t put their own reform plans on the table. “The people who are there to protest–what are they for? Are they for the status quo? The Republicans haven’t put any other plan on the table.” But did congressional Democrats offer their own alternative to President Bush’s 2005 Social Security plan? When a fellow Democrat asked Rep. Nancy Pelosi when their party would offer its own Social Security plan, her answer was “Never. Is that soon enough for you?” Democrats would not even negotiate until personal retirement accounts were taken off the table. Why should Republicans act differently today, regarding the “public option”?

That prompted this exchange between Rep. Tom McClintock, R-Calif., and the CBO director. “Let me ask you, are there more people working today or fewer people working today than at the — on inauguration day of 2009?” McClintock asked.

“I believe the answer to that,” said Elmendorf, “is there are fewer people, congressman.”

Is Obama’s economic plan succeeding or wildly failing to create jobs?

The [CBO] office says that will leave the unemployment rate at 8.9 percent at the end of this year, well above current the current rate of 8.5 percent, meaning the jobless rate would be increasing at election time.

[…]

And in 2013, CBO estimates unemployment will be even higher — at 9.2 percent.

Both of these statements from the Democrat-appointed CBO director prove that Barack Hussein Obama is a pathological liar on THE most fundamental issues that the American people care about. Obama says that he has created 2 million jobs; he is a liar from the lowest snake pit. And Obama claims that his policies are working WHEN THEY ARE WILDLY FAILING AND WILL FAIL WORSE IN THE COMING MONTHS.

Congressional Budget Office Director Doug Elmendorf on Wednesday projected that economic growth will slow by next year and unemployment will rise before that — a forecast that Rep. Paul Ryan called ominous, grim and alarming.

Elmendorf laid out the latest projections on the economy and deficits before the House Budget Committee on Capitol Hill.

Ryan, R-Wis., who is chairman, raised alarm given projections that 2012 “will mark the fourth straight year of trillion-dollar deficits.”

“Trillions more dollars will be added to debt in the years ahead, putting a chilling effect on jobs creation today and committing the next generation to a diminished future,” he said.

Democratic Rep. Chris Van Hollen took a different approach, saying deficits and growth would have been worse without President Obama’s stimulus plan. “The Recovery Act did serve its purpose. It’s kind of like when you’re walking up an escalator that’s going down very quickly. If you take no action you will go down very fast,” he said.

Yet future deficits depend in large part on how fast the economy grows, along with spending and revenues. And on that front, the CBO isn’t offering a lot of encouragement.

“The pace of the recovery has been slow since the recession ended two and a half years ago,” Elmendorf said. “And we project that it will continue to be slow for the next two years.”

The CBO believes that economic growth will be only 2 percent this year — and an anemic 1.1 percent next year.

The office says that will leave the unemployment rate at 8.9 percent at the end of this year, well above current the current rate of 8.5 percent, meaning the jobless rate would be increasing at election time.

That prompted this exchange between Rep. Tom McClintock, R-Calif., and the CBO director. “Let me ask you, are there more people working today or fewer people working today than at the — on inauguration day of 2009?” McClintock asked.

“I believe the answer to that,” said Elmendorf, “is there are fewer people, congressman.”

And in 2013, CBO estimates unemployment will be even higher — at 9.2 percent.

Republicans have been wringing their hands about deficits for years, but one Democrat on Wednesday railed against those who focus only on cutting spending.

“Because there are people here that want to destroy the government, that it has no responsibility and it can’t live up to the obligations,” said Rep. Bill Pascrell, D-N.J.

Several Democrats asked about how much revenues would be increased by eliminating the Bush tax cuts in hopes of avoiding more spending cuts.

One of the factors that will expand future deficits is entitlements, such as Medicare, which will explode as the baby boomers retire.

Elmendorf explained that “the fundamental fiscal challenge during this decade and beyond remains the aging of the population and rising costs for health care. The number of people aged 65 or older will increase by one-third in the coming decade, substantially raising the costs of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.”

In addition, he said, the new federal health care overhaul will significantly increase the number of non-elderly people receiving assistance through federal health care programs, such as Medicaid.

All of that is likely to balloon current levels of debt.

The CBO did project declining deficits under “current law.”

But current law would end the Bush tax cuts for everyone, even those making less than $250,000 a year, which neither Congress nor the president supports.

It would also mean a cut of almost 30 percent to doctors who treat Medicare patients, which Congress has never let take effect.

I wrote about this complete and total lie of Obama’s claims of creating jobs has been a couple of weeks ago. Basically, you can look at the labor participation rate to see that Obama has destroyed two-and-a-half million jobs; and if we used the same participation rate under Bush that we now have under Obama, unemployment would be well over eleven percent:

Please read my article (that also just came out today) on the shocking immoral disaster that Social Security was from the very beginning.

Consider that the real debt of our nation is $211 trillion, not the $16 trillion we hear about, and that Democrats have saddled us with virtually every single penny of a debt that we can never hope to repay and which will ultimately implode and destroy this nation. That’s the past that Democrats have immorally saddled us with in their effort to control our lives and our fortunes while they stole whatever sacred honor we otherwise could have aspired to.

Then consider the future that Democrats have in store for us as you contemplate all of Barack Obama’s shocking lies and the slowly sinking path to hell he has planned for us with his death by 4,200 – and counting – regulations.

Consider the ObamaCare boondoggle that has 160 new death panels in it:

Consider what CBO Director Elmendorf said about Obama’s documented history of job destruction as well as his prediction of future Obama job destruction.

And then please vote for America by voting against Obama this November.

America may not be able to survive anyway; but it definitely can’t survive another four years of Obama.